


The Last Dragon

by EledoneCirrhosa



Category: Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-19 02:01:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20323240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EledoneCirrhosa/pseuds/EledoneCirrhosa
Summary: When Lessa led the Weyrs through time to the 9th Pass, not everyone wanted to go.





	The Last Dragon

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Pern and the dragonriders belong to Anne McCaffrey not to me. 
> 
> Originally posted on Livejournal Pern community.

The wind whistled round the empty Weyr.

Old H’com surveyed Fort Weyr’s bowl from the ledge outside his weyr, his breath wheezing in the chill morning air. The cold always set his chest off, making him short of breath and feeling every one of his sixty-eight Turns. The sun had cleared the Star Stones, casting its rays across the feeding grounds to the now empty weyrling barracks. The weyrs on the Lower Caverns side of the bowl remained as yet in shadow – his own included. The dim light and chill air suited his mood. 

Behind him, his beloved Caxoth stirred in his sleep, tail twitching. The blue would not likely wake until sunlight touched the ledge. 

Caxoth slept more and more these days. His muzzle grey, his movements painful with joint-ail; the aging blue was slowly fading from life. But they’d fought Thread to the last, he and Caxoth. They may not be much use as anything other than a watchdragon these days, but the pair had always done their duty. The day the last Threadfall over Fort Weyr’s territory was scheduled – the last Threadfall the Fort Weyr riders had believed they’d ever fight – H’com had put on Caxoth’s fighting straps and taken his place with his wingmates.

The blue’s teeth were so worn down that he could barely chew firestone, and his stamina was so reduced that he could only sustain a few candlemarks in the air, but they fought. They flamed Thread until Caxoth’s tired old joints and H’com’s labouring lungs could take no more. Then they had returned to the Weyr to wait out the end of the ‘Fall. But they _had_ fought. They’d fought every Turn of the Eighth Pass. H’com smiled proudly at the memory.

“You should consider a transfer to Ista,” Weyrwoman Mardra had told him after that last ‘Fall. “Bake some of the aches and pains out of Caxoth’s bones in the sun.”

“Fort Weyr born and bred,” he’d replied. “Wouldn’t know what to do with myself at Ista.” 

He belonged here. Oh, he’d considered the move, and he knew that dragon memory being what it was, Caxoth would soon forget that he’d ever had wingmates and weyrmates at Fort. But H’com wouldn’t. 

He was too old to be learning and re-learning the ins and outs of a Weyr’s population. Who was related to who. Who dragged their heels and who got things done. Who was easy going and who would take offence at nothing. Who had a long-term weyrmate, who enjoyed a casual fling. It was enough trouble remembering the names of the latest crop of weyrlings, or the people he encountered at a gather. Remembering the names of a whole new Weyr of people? He’d be worse than a dragon in that regard. 

He belonged here, where he knew who was who and what was what. Where every stone and every corridor held a memory. Where he had lived all his life. Where he should die. 

He’d outlived two weyrmates: pretty Doralisa and practical Jolimme. He’d outlived his sons. Dragonriders, all three of them, and died dragonriders’ deaths: up in the skies, battling their ancient enemy. He had grandchildren, all of whom had stood on the sands, and two of whom had Impressed. And now there was a great-grandchild, who helped him oil Caxoth’s hide and solemnly informed him that one day she would be grown up, Impress gold and fight in the Queens’ Wing. 

The breeze brought H’com the distant sound of lowing herdbeasts; the few survivors of the mass feeding that had preceded the departure of Fort Weyr’s dragons.

Gone away, gone ahead. 

All but him. 

Lessa had come to them. Lessa and golden Ramoth, tumbled out of _between_, tumbled out of time – with a message of danger and a call to duty. 

It had been the most bizarre of days. H’com and Caxoth had been taking their shift as watchdragon on the heights, keeping watch over the road to Fort Hold and – by force of habit – the skies, though no threat would fall again until the Red Star returned. Caxoth had stood up abruptly, his eyes whirling violet with alarm.

_A gold! Carpath tells me a gold is at Ruatha. She is very sick._ Caxoth’s agitation and excitement had washed over H’com. 

_A gold?_ Carpath flew patrol over Ruatha Hold. But none of the Fort Weyr golds were there today. And none were sick. 

_I tell Loranth and Fidranth. I tell the Weyr._

As he had absorbed the information from Ruatha about an unknown queen, which none of the Weyrs could identify, at first H’com had thought it nothing but an intriguing puzzle. He was still on the heights when Loranth and the other golds of Fort Weyr managed the tricky task of carrying the exhausted gold and landing her safely in the feeding grounds. 

What a gold she had been! She was enormous, dwarfing all Fort’s queens. She was too weak to kill her own prey, but wolfed down the chunks of meat that were brought to her. As if she was just hatched and still ravenous from a long time in the shell. Yet between each mouthful she keened out heartbreak and turned her vast golden head to where the weyrhealers carried her rider towards the infirmary. 

The Weyr was awash with speculation and rumour for the next few sevendays. Golden Ramoth could provide no answers, communicating little with any dragon, even the other queens. She was from Benden Weyr, she had travelled to Ruatha, her rider’s name was Lessa – that was all they had managed to obtain from her. Even though it was evident that she was _not_ from Benden, since the Weyrleaders there had never before laid eyes upon the vast gold.

When the truth was announced, even the wildest speculation seemed tame in comparison. 

The Weyr suddenly became a frenzy of activity, everything being packed and parcelled up for the great journey about to be undertaken. Four hundred Turns…

Not to a new Weyr, but to a whole new world. 

“You’ll go to Benden?” his granddaughter Kamira had asked. She had brought her daughter to help him pack, and was surprised to discover he had not begun the task. “You didn’t seem too keen on Ista. Now you’ll go to Benden?” There was the light of suspicion in her eyes, carefully not voiced out loud within earshot of the child. 

“I can hardly stay here on my own, can I?” H’com had replied. 

He had watched Kamira’s suspicion deepen as he made gifts of various of his possessions to his great granddaughter and some of his wingmates. A hint of tears glimmered in her eyes now and then. But she kept her peace, having inherited the same practical streak that her grandmother Jolimme had possessed. 

There were farewells, varying from fond to ferocious. His wingmates asking again and again would he not make the journey with them? H’com shook his head and explained patiently over and over. Caxoth was not up to such a journey. He was not up to such a journey. He and his dragon were too old to fight Thread, so future Pern had no need of them. This was his world. This was his time. He belonged here. 

He climbed up to the Star Stones to watch them depart. The black shapes of dragons against the starlight. Hundreds taking off in serried ranks and then, as one, vanishing _between_. 

Far below, in his weyr, Caxoth slept, oblivious. 

H’com had returned to the weyr and to his bed, but been unable to sleep. He thought of the dragons of Fort Weyr, travelling, travelling, and eventually returning full circle to where they had started out. Four hundred Turns. Would even bones wither to dust in four hundred Turns?

Eventually he gave up trying to sleep and went outside, just as the first glimmers of dawn began to lighten the skies. He stood and watched as the sun rose higher and spilled into the Weyr’s interior, illuminating first the highest weyrs and creeping down to touch first the weyrling barracks and eventually the whole floor of the bowl.

_Rider, are you awake?_ Caxoth stirred within the weyr. 

At H’com’s affirmative the blue plodded out onto the ledge, his gait with the familiar limp of joint-ail in his hindquarters. _Does it hurt much this morning, lad?_ H’com asked.

_It hurts a little. The sun will make it go away._ Caxoth lowered himself carefully into a position suitable for soaking up the watery sunlight. H’com rubbed his grey muzzle with affection. _It is strange here without golds._ Caxoth’s tone was puzzled. H’com caught a flavour of a being adrift – a hierarchical creature with suddenly no hierarchy.

_Do you wish we’d gone with the others?_ He probed his dragon’s mind for signs of regret.

_No. Loranth and Ramoth said the journey would be very long and very hard. I am tired. I wish to rest, not to travel._

They sat together, enjoying the sunshine as it strengthened into a bright spring day. 

When it reached its zenith, H’com pulled himself to his feet. _Shall we go, lad?_

Caxoth raised his head. _Yes. Now would be a good time._ He hauled himself to his feet and H’com fitted his riding straps one last time, climbed one final time onto his beloved blue’s back. 

Caxoth tensed the muscles in his hindquarters and H’com felt a familiar echo of pain through their bond as the blue’s joints protested the strain. Then with a surge of effort he leapt upwards from his ledge. Powerful downstrokes lifted them high above the bowl, and up, up, up. 

_Now lad, now_ urged H’com. The pair blinked _between_. 

The wind whistled round the empty Weyr.


End file.
